


The Dark, Shadowed Plains

by Jairissa



Category: Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jairissa/pseuds/Jairissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a long path from one freedom to another. The Ancient Ones stop their whispering, the family slowly fractures and walls keep apart that which used to bring the greatest comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark, Shadowed Plains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angledust/gifts).



There was freedom once. A dark forest to curl up in, avoiding the worst of the harsh light of day. They were protected by the trees that moved their limbs to cover his siblings and trap the unworthy in their thrashing branches until nightfall. At night there were the shadowed plains, the moon giving enough light to chase down the hairless ones, the bad ones, and impale them on the end of a rock-sharpened horn. 

They had no names then. The bad ones gave them a name, _the uni-horn_. "One horn, unihorn, unicorn," they would taunt, in their strange, chattering language, unintelligible and unimportant, as they stopped their running and turned to fight. There was wild, savage joy as his siblings crushed them beneath heavy hooves, eliminating the unworthy. 

The worthy, the untainted, were left alive as a reward, and to pass on the tale of their survival and the conditions that had been set for the rest of their species. The Ancient Ones, the Mother and Father who had shaped them, laughing, were pleased and rewarded them with darkness that didn't burn their skin, and the shadows that gave them sight. 

Then they came. The unworthy, with the wolves they had bribed to their side. They were able to hunt only during the full moon, when the bad ones and the wolves could both see. They could not come during the day, when his brothers and sisters were protected by the forest. They waited for the bright moon and watched their spears fly true, piercing the soft white skin of the ones who gave judgement. They cut off their horns and they turned their skins into bags.

He alone was left. He, the youngest, still protected by the whispering leaves of the forest, caressed by the branches of the sorrowing trees. The Ancient Ones whispered in his ear, tales of the beginning of the earth and the time that was left. They promised him his vengeance, a future that retained purpose and worth.

The bad ones burned the forest to the ground and chased him, panicking, through burning sunlight, hiding in his mouth the seed of the last of the trees that had sheltered him. They corralled him in a paddock that had barely enough shade to hide in during the day, and sent only the pure to tend him. That lesson they had learned, at least. 

The tree he tucked into soil, and guarded jealously as it grew. It was many years before he felt the soft stroke of branches soothing him off to sleep, while the leaves sang their soft lullaby.

* * *

He is fond of the girl they send to tend him. She is the daughter of a fisherman. Her touch is gentle when she brushes his mane back from his face and feeds him the fresh meat she has bartered for, and the best of the day's catch. He does not like the fish, with its salty sea taste. It lacks the warm dripping blood that nourishes him. He eats it because she smiles when he does, and the pure innocence in her soul shines out at him.

She calls him "bright one" in her strange language. In his own language, that of soft sighs and pawing at the ground, he calls her "little dancer", because that is what she loves the best. 

The Ancient Ones are unhappy. They miss their sacrifices, and the terror that feeds them, makes them grow. They are not content with the tributes he brings them. He is allowed out rarely, after many moons pass, and what he brings back is never enough to satisfy the Creators, to sake their thirst for vengeance and fear. 

The village is by the sea, and that is where his newest brother comes from, scaly and lithe, pulling the unwary into his grasp and exalting when they gasp for breath. The bad ones, the humans as they now call themselves, send his girl to fight it. 

"If she can contain one monster," they reason in the sharp tones he has taught himself to understand. "Then perhaps she can contain another."

She cannot. The gentle little girl he loves is not enough for his new brother. He can hear her screams and her loud gurgles from his pen. He whines to his tree, nudging the sturdy branches and stomping on the ground. In time the fervency will come to be known as _prayer_ , but all he knows it as is a request to the ones who love him most.

"Not her," he asks until she is silent. He bows his head in acquiescence, curling up around the tree with a huffed apology. 

"It is not over," the leaves whisper back to him. "You may have her, if she will have you."

When his brother comes, he of the gills and the fountain of blood, he brings the shadows with him, banishing the light that has kept Bright One trapped. Bright One rears, a loud scream ripping its way through his throat. He tramples the last of the fence that has held him, kicking it while he races to the seaside and the water that is being whipped into tall, crashing waves. 

Little Dancer lies face down in the water, her chest heaving in the red liquid that surrounds her. Bright One leans down, nudges at her chest until he can turn her over. Her face, the soft lines and glowing eyes, are gone. There is an empty hole there, the beloved image erased. Little Dancer raises her hand to him, whimpering, and Bright One leans down to lick softly at the edge of her skin. 

"Come with me," he offers her in his own words, the ones she can't yet translate. She doesn't understand him, or doesn't want to. Bright One decides this doesn't matter. He leans down, lets her clutch at him until she can hang on, tugging too tightly to his mane. There are fish attached to her, hanging off her, the long thin ones that she had hated so much, with their rows of painful teeth. They flap behind him as he gallops back towards home.

Bright One leaves her by the tree, whinnying in pleasure as its branches wrap around her, kind and firm. He waits, as the moon grows round and then thin again, and his strange new brother finishes with the small village and returns to the sea, where he will traverse the coast to search for new prey. He waits until the tree's limbs open and Little Dancer tumbles out, her face replaced with the fish that had accompanied her. 

She cries when she raises her hands to her face and realises what she has become. Bright One nudges at her arm until she raises it, as light and graceful as always. Little Dancer cannot smile anymore, but he can feel the delight as she understands that she can still dance; that there is nothing else she needs to do if she doesn't want to.

She dances around the tree in the moonlight, and huddles with Bright One under its shade when the sun comes back. It is not the same as before, with all his brothers and sisters by his side, but Bright One has grieved for them. Little Dancer is more than an adequate companion. He thanks the Ancient Ones before he sleeps at morning, and again when he wakes at night.

* * *

Bright One teaches Little Dancer to tell the difference between the unworthy and the pure. He takes her on a long journey, hiding in the silent forests, the _wrong_ ones, with trees that don't talk when Bright One speaks to them. His tree, too, has grown, changed, as payment for its help with Little Dancer. It walks by their side, translating the messages from the Ancient Ones, who whisper the new judgements and penalties they want exacted against the humans that are stealing their place for themselves.

Little Dancer is more discerning than Bright One. Bright One will choose any of the unworthy, he is not picky in his decisions. Little Dancer is more judicious; she selects the dull, the ungraceful, the crude. She lures them in with her dance, and it is only when they are enchanted, following her mindlessly, that she turns and lets them see their fate.

Bright One is proud of what she has become.

She and his tree are developing a language they can all understand. Little Dancer cannot hear the sounds of the Old Ones through the leaves, and Bright One still has trouble with the nuances of her changed mouth. Their new tongue is touch; the easy press of flesh against fur and branch. It is a language of gestures and quiet whispers. Eventually they can talk without sound at all. 

Their freedom is short lived. The humans are not strong, but they are fast and they are clever. Slowly, despite the instructions of the Ancients and the best efforts of Bright One, Little Dancer and their tree, the world begins to shrink. The forests are burned down, the plains are paved and the humans swarm over the shadowed land, bringing light wherever they go. 

Bright One expects the abandonment long before it comes. The tree no longer sings to them, and it grows angry when the Ancient One's instructions don't come. They begin to hear talk, in the language of the humans, of the sacrifices that are being made in the Ancient's names: girls tossed into volcanos; village leaders slashing innocents across the throat in strange rituals; new magics that bring about quakes in the earth that swallow whole towns.

Bright One chafes at the neglect. He will not be comforted; not by the song of the tree, or Little Dancer twirling along to it. He becomes less discriminating. He stalks the pure as well as the corrupt. Instead of sacrifice he looks for tribute, payment for all the work he has done that is now unacknowledged. Little Dancer grows sad at his actions and her dancing wilts, her touch on his flank becoming scarce.

She finds him standing over a child that he has chased down. His horn is still soaked with her blood; it drips on to her face like the tears she can no longer cry. Little Dancer makes a long, deliberate wail out of her tooth-filled mouth. Bright One nickers in apology, bumping at her face with his snout. 

"I do not like this new world," Bright One tells her. She runs her hand down his side, then folds at the middle, lowering her face almost to the ground. She picks up a toy that the girl had been holding, one of a family, and offers it to Bright One.

"Perhaps we need new friends," she says.

"Will it make the Mother and Father come back to us?" Their tree asks, that who misses the Creators most of all. 

"I don't know," Little Dancer says, offering the doll into their tree's branches. The tree folds around it, sinking its roots down into the soft soil. "But I'm tired of being lonely. I want more."

She adds the body of the girl so that their tree may have something to build from, and settles herself down at the base. Bright One folds his legs, drops his head to her shoulder and they wait together to see if the old magic is still there. The moon rises and falls over again, the only movement from their small family coming when Little Dancer goes to find food for them all.

Their new friend, when she awakens, is not the same. She is not less, but she is _different_. She does not hear the words of the leaves either, and she has trouble learning the language that has been created between them. The loneliness in Little Dancer is more obvious in the new one, more pronounced; she is lacking something that Bright One does not understand.

"We will find new friends," Little Dancer promises, collecting the broken and decaying toys that had been left with the girl. She has a new determination, a passion that Bright One has not seen in her before. "You will not be alone. I will be your mother, Bright One will be your father, and our tree will shelter us all. Now we will find siblings for you. You may choose them if you wish."

The new friend, who designates herself Pretty Doll, nods her white head, with its expressionless face. Little Dancer traces the unmoving mouth and extends it, painting a smile on her face with the remains of the girl's own blood. 

"I will like that," she says, in the language of the humans. "I will have a family too."

* * *

With most of their forests gone they are forced into the boundaries of the city. There is nowhere for Bright One to hide, so he is forced to stay in the outskirts, hiding in barns amongst the common horses. The creatures know there is something different about him, something wrong, and they shy away from him in their stalls. He eats their food, the tasteless hay, and drinks their water, but it does not make him one of them.

When the family returns Pretty Doll has found a mate. She calls him her husband. The loneliness in her is a little less. She paints her own smiles now, and adorns her husband's face with the same red paint. She calls him Handsome Doll, and refuses to be parted from him for more than the time it takes to lure in their favourite prey, the imaginative ones who still want to play once they are grown.

Little Dancer has become fascinated by a new kind of dance. She saw it when she was hiding in the city, attending performance after performance with a veil over her face, learning all the intricate steps and falling more in love with each one. She has found a dress somewhere, a pale pink one that comes to her knees and shows her arms. Bright One can see how easily she moves now, how much joy she takes in her steps.

When Pretty Doll paints a smile on her face she gurgles a laugh and twirls happily around on her toes.

"Thank you," she taps out against Pretty Doll's hand. "But I think that we're not done yet."

The next two are found together. They are a brother and a sister; not quite children, but not yet adults. They are older than Little Dancer, which makes her laugh with pleasure to think of it. 

"I will be the mother to many," she predicts, pleased, as their tree moulds their new family members into the image of the first.

"No," Pretty Doll says in her human tongue. "These ones are mine. I will be Mother Doll and he will be Father Doll. These new ones will now be Pretty Doll and Handsome Doll."

Little Dancer contorts her face, stamping her foot in fury. She waves her hands, making the symbols for _anger_ and stop, but Pretty Doll has never had trouble ignoring these words when she wants to.

"These ones are mine," Little Dancer insists. Bright One stands beside her, his first friend, and lends his strength to her argument. The husband stands between them, both hands raised to his chest in supplication. He is slow with their language, and he complements his argument with the human words.

"Let the new ones decide," he suggests comfortingly. "They may choose their own parents."

It is a fair compromise. When they come out, the new ones choose Mother Doll and Father Doll. Little Dancer growls in fury and opens her mouth to attack their new friends. Bright One whimpers, pawing at the ground in confusion. He is not sure where to stand, or who to maul. The Ancient Ones give no answers anymore; all that is left is their small family.

"These are mine now," Mother Doll says. She has scrubbed the smile off her face and she stands before her new children, fierce and strong. "You may not have them, and you may not hurt them. I am the mother now, and I will follow my own path."

She leaves them, taking her chosen. They are alone again, the ancient's children and their created friend. Little Dancer grieves for them, even in her anger. They retreat to the forest again, and sleep curled up together as the world changes around them. There are no more children, and no more sacrifice. Their place has been taken now, given away to the uncaring, unknowing.

* * *

When the humans come for them again they are quicker, smarter than the last ones Bright One had known. They have strong weapons and stronger cages.

"We've heard about you," the one who catches him says, her face cruel and taunting. "It took us a while to find you, too. You've been falling down on your job. It's time to get back into the game."

The woman has the force of the Old Ones in her voice, and so Bright One stops fighting and lets them take him. The cage that he is trapped in is made of solidified air, clear but impenetrable. Bright One can't see Little Dancer and he panics without her, charging at the wall until he fears that his horn might snap.

One of the humans comes to him, speaks their new language through the walls. Bright One rears up, whinnying in confusion as the words surround him, echoing and coming from nowhere. 

"Hush there, unicorn," the human says. It's a different word to the first one he heard, but the meaning is the same. If the human understood his language Bright One would be yelling, screaming until the human understood that he had no right to that word, not when his people had been the ones to destroy his first family.

Through the mass of confused creatures he glimpses their tree, blood still staining its limbs. In another direction, when Bright One turns around, is Little Dancer, and he attacks the wall again as he tries to get to her. 

"Enough," the human insists. The boxes start to move, shifting a mass of creatures around him. Bright One sees the sea brother, drying and miserable. When the cages settle again he is housed beside Little Dancer, and beside their tree. "See? If you behave you will be rewarded. If you don't, then we will take away everything you love. Consider it."

Bright One huffs between his teeth. Little Dancer walks up to the glass and taps her fingers against it as if the barrier was his flesh.

"Don't panic, Dear One," she tells him. "You have been caged before. We will be free again. There is always hope."

Bright One doesn't tell her than he has seen her children, gathered all in one cage. They are lucky to be together, and he is happy for them, but he knows that their creator will not share in it. She is used to the freedom of the forest and the plains, and still longs for the ocean wind to blow across a face that she no longer possesses. 

He lets her dream of the open air, and practice her dance steps in her tiny space. She seems content with this. He doesn't tell her when his legs grow stiff and he can barely walk from one side of his pen to another. He stays silent when others are picked from the cages around them. Some come back and some don't, but if he closes his eyes he can almost hear the whisper of the Ancient Ones in the leaves and feel the light touch of Little Dancer as she pirouettes on the ground under his hooves.

* * *

It is a long time before Little Dancer is chosen. When she comes back she is covered with blood, and the humans are full of praise for her. They call her the Sugarplum Fairy, after her favourite dance, and she is gifted with a new dress that makes dancing much easier for her. She taps her pleasure through the glass and Bright One shares her delight as she licks the blood off the remains of her face.

It is longer still before he is called. He is told that his signal is paper, folded up in to the shape of a unicorn. He snorts at that; he does not like being compared to something so fragile. He is strong, the strongest of his kind, the only one left alive. He whinnies at the humans when he is removed from his cage, and sent back up onto the land.

It smells different. Artificial and acrid, it has none of the beautiful scent of grass or tree. He is directed to humans, a small group of them, and told in which order they must die. In his head he hears it again: the voice of the Ancient Ones, so long absent, and he bows his knees as he obeys. 

His steps are shaky at first, but Bright One is pleased when he finds the first, _the whore_. She smells impure, like the bad ones that he had once taken such joy in hunting. He spears her straight through the middle, and raises her up on his horn with a high-pitched squeal. He has to shake his head to make her fall off, and she lies motionless on the ground, supplicated in front of him.

Bright One has been long without pleasure, and the reminder of his youth is intoxicating. He chases the bad ones through the woods, into the darkness that puts obstacles in front of their feet that they can't see. There are no wolves, and though the trees do not move to trip them it is enough for him. He fights to the last man and comes out victorious, chest heaving with exertion and triumph. 

He leaves the last woman alive. She is the virgin, the pure one. He leans against her and licks her cheek, snuffling when she screams and pulls away from him. He contemplates taking her too, but this hunt is not for him, it is for the Creators, the ones who made him and nurtured him until the humans became too strong.

So he leaves her there, crying as Little Dancer once had, alone. She will feel it now, what Bright One had before he had found another family. This, too, pleases him. 

As a reward he is given a bigger cage, with more room. He is fed fresh meat, rather than hay, and Mother Doll and her family are moved closer to them, reunited at least with Little Dancer and the tree that made them. They call him the _Angry Molesting Tree_ and Bright One stamps his foot in approval; he is glad that they don't know he is capable of creating as easily as destroying. 

It makes it harder for them to create new monsters. The Ancient Ones are forced to lend some of their own power, an idea they resent. In punishment they require greater rituals, more detailed hunts to satisfy their hunger. Little Dancer is chosen most often, and taught new ways of killing. She passes her knowledge on to her family, so that they, too, might be ready for the next time they are freed.

* * *

When that time comes Bright One is not alone. Their cages are all opened, the barriers between them breaking down. Some hesitate, considering their fellow prisoners carefully. The others are cleverer, taking the opportunity to break away and destroy the pathetic mortals that have been holding them captive so long.

"Find a way out," Little Dancer tells him as she walks gracefully out of her cage. Bright One tilts his head at her, shaking it unhappily. Little Dancer shrugs her shoulders and huffs. "Don't be like that. There will be people in your way, do what you will with them."

Bright One snorts, and follows the scent of blood. More of it fills his lungs as he goes, and he is becoming lost when he finds another scent. A _pure_ scent. He finds the pure boy with a girl, impure and lacking innocence. He is shielding her from the monsters and the humans, both intent on driving them back inside. 

He watches the boy for a time, fending off the few humans that come for him easily. He decides he will let the boy be. If he finds the girl alone he will intervene, but he hasn't the time now. Little Dancer wishes to be free, and he will find a way to let his girl out of her prison. 

It isn't simple; he has to charge through more than one wall to find the way, and he loses the scent a dozen times, but eventually he finds the elevator that will lead them outside. Little Dancer is not far behind him, and she comes leading their tree by a branch.

"The Dolls?" Bright One asks her.

"They will not come," Little Dancer says sadly. Bright One nudges her, and together they climb in the metal box. Little Dancer presses the button. They are going up when the ground starts to shake beneath them. He can hear the voice of the Old Ones through the leaves. The Angry Molesting Tree, as he has enjoyed being named, translates happily, forgetting none of the words he had been so long denied.

There are silent trees outside the prison. Bright One, Little Dancer and the Angry Molesting Tree watch as the ground falls down and the scent of blood once again coats the landscape. They stand witness as the Father raises his hand and slaps down the human's creation. He is slow to climb out of the ground, and the Mother slower, but when they are done their two children, and their children's creation, go to kneel at their feet.

"You are back," Bright One says in the language that he has invented.

"We have missed you," the Old Ones say, their breath a gale force wind in the Tree's branches. "We are proud of you, and of the friend you have created."

Bright One paws at the ground and whimpers. He has been so long without this praise, comforted only by his small family.

"What now?" Little Dancer asks them. The Ancient Ones point to the path the humans paved and the children see the barriers keeping it contained collapse to the ground.

"Dance, Little One," the Mother says affectionately. Bright One leans down and lets Little Dancer climb on to his back, clutching tight to his mane. He snorts at the Tree, but the child he has nurtured doesn't move. The Ancient Ones are giving him presents, the bodies of all the ones that have been killed today, in their name. "He will create new friends for you. You will go, and lead the way."

Bright One goes, Little Dancer balanced precariously on top of him. Soon there will be more trees to sing their songs, more frightened humans to cleanse of impurity. If he is particularly good there will be brothers and sisters again, more unicorns to share the growing forest with him.

"We will find you a friend, too," he tells Little Dancer when he stops to drink. "A partner to dance with."

"I will like that," Little Dancer agrees, her feet moving in swift circles on the forest floor. "It is long past time for it."


End file.
